The invention relates to a method and an arrangement for recognizing objects in mail item images, their position and reading their postal information in color and gray level images of mail item surfaces using at least one automatic reading device.
For large letters, magazines and packets it is often difficult to find and read the postal inscriptions such as the addressee's name and address as well as sender's particulars. The cause often lies with colored, patterned background images which may even contain other texts. To solve this problem, the practice has been to capture the mail item surfaces using a low resolution color camera and a high resolution gray level camera only the areas containing the postal information would be looked for and identified in the coarse color image of the mail item surface. Using this information, the corresponding inscriptions could then be read in the high resolution gray level image (U.S. Pat. No. 6,798,896 B2, DE 195 32 842 C1). Having two cameras has meant that complex/costly synchronization is also necessary.